


Let me be the wallpaper that papers up your room

by Teatrolley



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Seasons in the life, as always, two dorks very much in love and trying to figure stuff out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 17:36:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5384423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teatrolley/pseuds/Teatrolley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I did just make us breakfast,” he says nonetheless. Sherlock has to turn his head slightly to smile, before he presses it to John’s neck, letting him feel the happiness sitting there.<br/>“Shut up,” he says again, but this time it’s a joke, and John’s laugh bellows into the room.<br/>“I love you,” John says.<br/>“Kiss me then.”<br/>John does.</p><p>_________________</p><p>Four seasons in the life of Sherlock and John, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let me be the wallpaper that papers up your room

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Every Other Freckle by Alt-J
> 
> Hey, so, this could be said to be very much in the style of "And as the seasons change, I love you more." I repeat myself. Perhaps this is a vol. 2 of the same concept, except with more angst and more laughter.

**Summer 2016**

John kisses him for the first time on a Tuesday in June.

 

It doesn’t happen with the kind of preamble that Sherlock had imagined would surely take place, if he could even imagine anything taking place at all. John comes back on a Thursday in late May, and on a Saturday he is unpacked and have taken up his left space in the flat again. He takes up the space he left empty behind him inside of Sherlock’s chest and mind palace as well; he crawls back in and settles down, like he never left at all. For once Sherlock doesn’t feel like the wind howls as it collides with all of his empty space; he’s full.

When John kisses him, it’s because Sherlock made him laugh. Not the kind of exhausted, incredulous laugh that he sometimes gives, when Sherlock is being Too Much. No, his fond laugh, the one that is small but bright in its warmth. It’s marked #27 in Sherlock’s mind palace; it took a while for John to become affectionate, in the way that this sound entails.

John’s lips are soft against his own; the pressure is barely there at all, and if Sherlock moved even a miniscule bit they wouldn’t be kissing anymore. He is careful to stay still. On John’s bottom lip there’s a dry patch. It’s at the space where he will sometimes bite, looking as if about to say something, before reconsidering. Sherlock ponders if maybe this is what he’s always wanted to say.

It’s John who pulls away, too. He doesn’t go too far, though. Instead he stays with his nose aligned with Sherlock’s, breathing on Sherlock’s cheek. He’s still smiling.

“I’m in love with you,” he says. “Just in case that wasn’t clear by now.”

Sherlock’s mind runs through several possible options of replies – “I know.” “No one has ever said that to me before.” “I’m in love with you, too.” – but the rest of him is rather occupied by the closeness of John, and all of the things Sherlock wants to have with him. He could calculate the exact pressure of John’s thumb against the soft skin above his hipbone, where John's hand is placed. He could, with exacts precision, figure out the temperature of John’s body and his breath, and the difference between them.

Sherlock does neither of those things. What he does do is kiss John back.

“Does that mean that you’re in love with me too?” John asks afterwards. His lips are pink, his voice breathless, and his face is accompanied by a beam that Sherlock saves at the very front of his mind palace, always ready to be recalled.

“Don’t be smart,” is what he actually says, but John laughs so loudly it vibrates in Sherlock’s bones, and then he kisses him again.

__

John moves out of the upstairs bedroom immediately the next day. They’ve been beating around this for so long that it hardly makes sense to pretend that any of them have any interest in going slow.

John crawls into Sherlock’s bed that night – no, their bed – and imprints himself on Sherlock’s skin. His fingers burrow into all of the soft places he can find on Sherlock’s body. There aren’t many, but Sherlock knows there are more than there used to be; that’s John’s doing as well. When they pull off their clothes John tells Sherlock to keep his socks on, because he knows of Sherlock’s poor blood circulation and, “I’d like to not do this hidden under the duvet, if you wouldn’t mind. I need to see you.”

For the first five minutes Sherlock calculates the way John touches him, and holds it up against the way John’s breath hitches or goes all deep and heavy and hot against Sherlock’s neck. Then the sensory overload overwhelms him, and he has to give in, and for once let his body take over the control. This is new. But with John, it isn’t scary.

“All right?” John whispers to him. Sherlock hums a positive, too dazed for anything else.

“What would you like?” John asks. He presses a kiss to Sherlock’s chest, over the place where his left atrium contracts and sends his blood out through his body.

“You,” Sherlock says. John smiles.

“You have me,” he says. “I was thinking a bit more specifically?”

Sherlock hardly has to consider it: “Shag me.” He doesn’t miss the way John’s eyes widen, and his pupils enlarge. He feels rather pleased about the way John’s cock hardens, too.

“Yeah,” John says, and his voice is suddenly much lower, and much more hoarse. “With pleasure.” Sherlock snorts to hide his chuckle, and raises himself to kiss the corner of John’s mouth sweetly. John turns his head, and Sherlock lets his lips be caught.

“Have you done it before?” John asks. For a brief moment Sherlock considers saying no. Any thought in that direction is however quickly overshadowed by his determination to never lie to John again. At least, not about something like this.

“Yes,” he says, truthfully. John studies his expression.

“You say it like there’s a but?”

“I’ve never done it sober.” Sherlock examines John carefully, looking for any sign of regret or distress or, even, disgust. He knows how John hates the drugs, hates that Sherlock ever used them. John’s expression does harden for a moment, and Sherlock sees the anger hidden there, in the knotting of John’s eyebrow. He touches it with a fingertip. When he does, John’s eyes return to his, and the hardness falls away and barely grazes sadness before affection is back.

“Thanks for telling me,” he says.

“I considered lying.”

“I know.”

Sherlock sees that he does. He lets his forehead be kissed.

John holds his hand out, with his palm turned towards Sherlock. He doesn’t say anything, but the gesture seems to be of sentiment; almost like it’s exploring new boundaries. Sherlock turns his head, so his eyes are watching their hands as he raises his own and places it against John’s. Their palms are touching. Just a little pressure is applied to Sherlock’s fingertips by John’s.

Sherlock watches their hands meeting each other, existing as if in symbiosis, and feels something settling within him. When he turns back to John’s expression, it has changed. Now it is calm with understanding, as if the exchange was not just their hands touching, but the vocalisation of something profound. Perhaps it was. As Sherlock allows himself an affectionate smile, their fingers interlock.

From now on, they’re in this together.

**Winter 2016**

Once the snow starts hitting the ground, soft and pale, Sherlock has fallen hard enough to hit one as well. Only, his ground isn’t a bad one to have reached. It’s one where he wakes up more often than not with another warm body next to his, and his immediate feeling isn’t regret of last night, but blooming, smouldering, heavy love. It’s one where the clammy hands clinging to the insides of his chest are less insistent, and pain and heartache is being murdered soft kiss by soft kiss.

He wakes up alone on a Wednesday in December, but only moments later he’s re-joined by toast and tea and John. He accepts a tender kiss to his forehead, and lets John intertwine his feet and legs with his own under the duvet.

“Cold,” he murmurs. John smiles.

“Brilliant observation,” he says. “Might that be due to the weather, do you think, or even the time of year?”

“Shut up.”

This time John laughs, before he snuggles in closer to Sherlock under the covers, aligning their bodies until not an inch of space is left between them. Like this, Sherlock can breathe most freely.

He turns his head down towards John’s; by now they’ve worked out a silent language, and John interprets this gesture correctly and presses a gentle kiss to Sherlock’s lips.

“Morning breath,” he mumbles as he pulls away, but Sherlock grabs on to the sides of his face and returns to his lips, this time with more fever and less softness.

“Shut up,” he mumbles back right before he licks into John’s mouth and the mood changes. As expected John gives in to the change without protest and sighs contently as Sherlock puts his hands up under John’s shirt.

“I did just make us breakfast,” he says nonetheless. Sherlock has to turn his head slightly to smile, before he presses it to John’s neck, letting him feel the happiness sitting there.

“Shut up,” he says again, but this time it’s a joke, and John’s laugh bellows into the room.

“I love you,” John says.

“Kiss me then.”

John does.

 

Afterwards Sherlock attaches himself to John’s side as they eat their toast, and John runs a hand through his hair, and he knows he hasn’t ever felt happiness like this before John. He reaches up to grab John’s hand from his hair, and pulls it down to press his lips to the back of it.

“I do love you, too, you know,” he says. John squeezes his fingers and, Sherlock knows, grins.

“I do know. I still like hearing it, though. Thank you.”

“I’ll say it more.”

John puts his face in Sherlock’s hair and sighs. “You don’t have to.”

“I know that,” Sherlock says. John intertwines their fingers.

“Well, then,” he says. “Be my guest.”

“I love you,” Sherlock says again, partly as a joke, and partly simply because it’s true. John chuckles and finds Sherlock’s lips from an awkward angle but kisses him anyway. Sherlock really does love him.

__

 

The next Saturday John makes a proposition that goes something along the lines of, “Let’s bake some biscuits.” The result of this is a kitchen in an almost worse state than when Sherlock and his body parts get to it before John can stop them and make them go to a proper lab.

“It says to beat the eggs in,” John says.

“I _am_ beating them in.” Sherlock, admittedly, is not sure that this is in fact what he’s doing, but like hell he’s going to tell John that.

“No, you’re not.” John reaches out for the bowl, but Sherlock quickly sidesteps him, clinging to the thing like it’s his newborn child. Or, perhaps, his severed head that John is trying to throw in the bin.

“I know how to make biscuits, John,” he mutters under his breath. To his immense surprise, John simply chuckles.

“Evidently not.” John takes another step towards Sherlock, so Sherlock takes another step away. John raises his eyebrows.

“I could touch your wrist with just a little pressure and make you hand that over in a second,” he says.

The threat makes all of Sherlock’s blood immediately rush south. Before he can do anything silly, like beg John to take him on the floor, he grabs a handful of flour from the bowl and throws it in John’s face. The look of betrayed surprise on said face is almost comical, before John reaches out for the bowl quickly enough to catch Sherlock off guard, causing him to squeal and cover it up with a giggle.

“You did not,” John says, and starts reaching out for Sherlock, but this time Sherlock is prepared and manages to step away. Not for long though; John was not in the army for nothing. Barely seconds later Sherlock finds himself being pushed rather forcefully up against the fridge, from where a magnet or two falls to the floor. He’s laughing. John is smiling, too, but it’s mischievous.

Then he grabs both of Sherlock’s wrists in his right hand and holds them up over his head, digging in his fingers just hard enough to be felt, and Sherlock, not to his but, evidently, to John’s surprise, groans deeply.

He watches as John’s eye travel from Sherlock’s flushed face, to his hard cock, to his wrists above his face and back again, and deduces the exact moment that John connects the dots.

“Oh,” John breathes. Sherlock can’t help his smile, despite his heavy breathing.

“I wondered when you would find out,” he says, but John shuts him up by tightening his grip harshly and making Sherlock’s legs nearly buckle beneath him.

“Oh,” John says again, more firmly this time. Sherlock sees the power overshadowing John’s eyes and feels breathless with lust at it.

“Bed?” John asks. Sherlock spreads his legs a little, provocatively.

“If you say so,” he says, and smiles when it’s John’s turn to groan. This could certainly be interesting.

__

They don’t say anything to Lestrade or the rest of the Met, but they both start showing up to cases with bite-marks and love bites littering their necks, and Sherlock will, more often than not, show up wearing one of John’s ugly jumpers, because it’s cold, and because he can. People hardly bat an eyelid, but Sherlock does see Anderson smirking at Donovan the first day this happens, and later he sees her reluctantly handing over fifteen quids to Anderson.

Not long into this development Lestrade pulls him into his office alone, while he’s doing paperwork on one of John’s office days.

“You know, I know you know, now you know I know you know, isn’t that it sorted?” Sherlock asks him as soon as he enters. Lestrade just smiles.

“I’m happy for you two,” he says.

“Yeah.” It’s not true that Sherlock hates sentiment; all of that had always been a lie. He is however still getting accustomed to engaging with sentiment from parties that aren’t John. “Ta,” he adds. “Gauston.”

Lestrade smiles again and rolls his eyes.

“Was that all?” Sherlock asks when Lestrade doesn’t comment further.

“Your rate of cases solved has gone up since the two of you got together,” Lestrade says then.

Sherlock doesn’t say anything, but he thinks about it for the rest of the day, and continues to think about it on the couch as John watches crappy telly with Sherlock’s head in his lap.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, and runs his hand through Sherlock’s hair; he likes to do that. Sherlock is honestly a bit impressed with John’s ability to tell “thinking” and “mind-palace” apart. Also: John can’t always figure it out on his own, but he cares enough to ask. Sherlock looks up at him and is met with tenderness.

“Ask me again,” he requests. John smiles with affection.

“What are you thinking?” he repeats. Sherlock sits up, and John adjusts around him so their bent knees are pressed against each other. Sherlock kisses him gently.

“You make me better,” he says then. John’s eyes grow heavy but fond, and he puts his hand to Sherlock’s cheek. Sherlock kisses it. “At my job, yes. But you make me a better man, too.”

“You’re a good man,” John says.

“Because of you.”

“Don’t let me take all the credit,” John says. “You were always good.”

“Maybe,” Sherlock concedes, although he doesn’t feel it very much. “But more so now.” John’s smile is small and a little sad.

“I think your opinion of yourself is too low.”

“I think yours of me might be too high,” Sherlock says.

He feels that. He doesn’t like to admit it, but somewhere in the back of his mind he’s still waiting for the day John wakes up and sees him for who he really is, and decides he can’t stand to be around that. Sherlock decides to hold on tight to what he has now, and treasure every little part of him, every little easily-handed-over intimacy that John gives him. He watches John and collects all of his private moments to live by if he ever chooses that he can no longer stay.

John doesn’t say anything, probably doesn’t know what to say, but he hugs Sherlock tight enough to hold together the hole in Sherlock’s chest that could so easily be re-opened. Later, holding Sherlock tightly against him in their shared bed, he whispers, “I’ve seen all of the ugly; I’ve stared it down. I still think you’re good.”

Sherlock breathes shakily into John’s chest and, just for a moment, lets himself believe it. He’s surprised by how easy it is.

 

John didn’t see the scars the first time they had sex, but he saw them the morning after, and he cried as he pressed his fingers to Sherlock’s wounded flesh.

“Why?” he begged.

“To save you.”

John broke down against Sherlock’s neck.

“I’m tired of being the one to ruin you,” he whispered into it when he had calmed down. Sherlock’s heart moved to his throat in fear of what would come next, but it wasn’t goodbye like he thought. Instead John said, “Will you let me be the one to make you happy, now, instead?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, and when they kissed both of their faces were wet, but they were together now and that was all that mattered.

**Fall 2017**

In October John takes a month off work and they embark on a trip around Europe together.

In Spain it’s still hot enough for them to get in the ocean, and Sherlock calculates the exact amount that John’s hair whitens from the sun. He falls asleep spooned up against John’s body on the beach, and at night they share their hotel bed with all of the sand, but John watches Sherlock lustfully as he emerges from the sea with his body and his hair wet, so it’s all alright.

In Morocco – technically not Europe, but they’re close, so why not? – public displays of affection is frowned upon, so Sherlock spends four days realising how accustomed he’s come to being able to hold John’s hand whenever he likes. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say, and those nights they sleep tangled up together all night like they haven’t since the first two months of their relationship.

In France they go wine-tasting and get drunk off their faces in the giddy way that they both do on wine, and that night in the bed and breakfast room they put on stupidly sensual music and Sherlock attempts, somewhat unsuccessfully, to do a striptease. In the end John kisses him sweetly and giggles into his mouth as they rut against each other like teenagers, so perhaps it wasn’t that unsuccessful after all.

In Paris Sherlock charms them into a gourmet restaurant just to see the look of fascinated awe on John’s face. They agree that they’d really rather have takeaway curry, and John’s hand is on Sherlock’s thigh under the table throughout the entire dinner.

In the Czech Republic in Prague they take moonlit strolls at night, and John tells Sherlock that he’s beautiful, so Sherlock tells him that John must surely be the beautiful one, and if nothing else, they agree that they’re probably more in love than they’ve ever been.

Last stop is Norway, where they hike until their legs are sore, are in awe of the scenery, and where they rent a small cabin in the middle of a forest clearing. “I could live in a place like this,” John says, and Sherlock kisses him and breathes him, because he could too. In-between hikes they spend hours at a time in bed, watching the scenery outside the window and loving each other.

“Let’s just stay like this forever,” John tells him during one of those times. Sherlock only hears forever, and for the first time he lets himself imagine it as something that could happen and, even, something that will.

“I could live with that,” he says.

“No, you couldn’t. You’d go insane. I would too, probably. But someday.”

“Someday?” Sherlock says. “Are you planning my retirement for me?”

John laughs and kisses Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock could think of nothing he’d rather do than become old with John Watson.

 

**Spring 2019**

Sherlock buys a ring on a Tuesday in April. Three days before he proposes.

 

They’re on the couch together, each of them huddled up in their own respective ends, but in the middle their feet are meeting. Sherlock is reading some unsolved-crime reports, and John is reading some god-awful fiction novel. Sherlock feels John watching him.

“What are you doing?” he asks, and doesn’t look up. He doesn’t see it, but he feels John smiling.

“You’ve developed a double-chin,” John says. His tone of voice is giddy, goddam him.

“I have not.”

“You have,” John insists, so Sherlock looks up and hits him over the head with his report. John laughs, so Sherlock pushes him back against the couch-arm and sits astride his lap.

“I have not,” he repeats. John just grins widely.

“No,” he agrees, before he reaches up to grab Sherlock’s face in his hands. Sherlock allows – well, more than allows, really – the kiss. “I just wanted an opportunity to tell you that I love you.”

Sherlock scoffs. “You’re a sappy idiot,” he says, but kisses John again for a long time, until they’re both a little breathless.

“Hm,” John mumbles. “But I’m your sappy idiot.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes but grins widely, so the effect is sort of lost. “Shut up,” he mumbles. John chuckles again.

“Marry me,” he says then. So, okay, technically John proposes first. It need not be mentioned.

For a moment Sherlock freezes, as his brain tries to catch up with the words that just left John’s lips. John just grins up at him widely as he waits.

Sherlock is so frazzled and dazed that the first thing he says when his abilities return is, “No.” He realises what that meant just as he sees John’s face fall, and has never hurried as much to correct himself: “I mean, yes. Yes, of course, yes.” He kisses John hard to kiss that devastated look off of him.

“I mean, I don’t know,” he pulls back to say. John looks slightly worried, but not as horrible as before. “I mean–“ Sherlock takes a deep breath. “I mean, I wanted to propose to you.”

“Oh, thank God,” John says, and laughs. He reaches up to pull Sherlock down and kiss him. “Jesus Christ, Sherlock.”

“Sorry,” Sherlock mumbles into the kiss.

“You said ‘no’.”

“Sorry,” Sherlock says again, and kisses John deeply to portray this. “I love you.”

John pulls back to smile into Sherlock’s cheek, before he pulls back enough to smile at Sherlock, and they both break down into giggles. John shakes his head.

“I don’t have a ring,” he says. “I didn’t plan this.”

“S’alright,” Sherlock mumbles as he kisses John’s neck.

“You get the ring,” John says then. “I propose, you get the ring. We do this together.” Sherlock stops his ministrations to look at John.

“Marry me?” John asks again. This time he’s grinning. Sherlock chuckles, and leans in to kiss him again; tenderly, gentle, with all of his affection.

“Yes,” he says this time, pulling back to look John in the eye. “Yes.” Then: “Marry me?”

John laughs so hard his head is thrown back and Sherlock hears it ringing in his ears afterwards. “Yeah, alright,” he says, grinning, and then they’re kissing again.

“I still get gloating rights as the person who proposed,” John mumbles into the kiss as Sherlock starts pulling his own shirt off.

“Hm,” Sherlock hums. “We’ll see.” John is smiling so hard Sherlock almost can’t kiss him.

“Shag me,” he says to the corner of John’s mouth instead.

John does, but neither of them ever stop smiling, not even when they’re moaning out the other’s name. Sherlock couldn’t have imagined a way that could have been any more perfect, or any more them.

 

So, three days later he buys the rings, and John is waiting for him in the kitchen when he gets home with them. When they put them on the other’s finger, they do it together, just like they do everything else.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, or it made you feel something, I would appreciate a comment immensely. They keep me going.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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